the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Nobody seemed to care about the pugilistic parts I was mentioning anyways. The discussion deviated to something else.

"Fu Zhongwen and his son Fu Shengyuan...what they showed publicly like form is not the form they really did. What was shown publicly and privately were different. For instance Strike tiger not commonly shown looks like block down and straight punch to the face whereas what is shown in public looks more like a wide hook punch. There is a lot of striking that is defanged in the public stuff."

I guess that's why experience is a better teacher, it doesn't cheat you out of useful information. Attitudes like this contribute to the overall degradation of the arts, and now they've reached their pitiful modern state.

There is no secret private form this is crap
Just the fact of displaying or teaching a lesser form would de skill the practitioner
I have never been afraid of showing anything in public because I know how hard it is to pass on true skill
Some can practice right method their whole life and never get it
As soon as I hear the words OLD ORIGINAL SECRET HIDDEN I smell a rat
Those that say it exists display the realm in which their training exists

C'mon, Wayne! Don't be shy. Just go ahead and tell us how you really feel about everyone who isn't practicing what you do. Lol

I have respect for plenty of people who don’t train what I do
I have just seen too many charlatans leading people down the garden path with secret bullshit
If that’s the crowd you choose to run with more power to you

I understand. Not my crowd, either.

Nonetheless, as the old kungfu poem says..."I know how to hurt. I know how to heal. I know what to show, and what to conceal."

Doc Stier wrote:I understand. Not my crowd, either.

Nonetheless, as the old kungfu poem says..."I know how to hurt. I know how to heal. I know what to show, and what to conceal."

Likewise if you want them to know nothing, tell them everything.

I think there's a difference between throttling information to help focus the student on development appropriate for their level, and holding back information for fear of... What, the student surprising the master? "Secret" techniques that they want to keep in surprise for potential enemies?

I don't doubt that champion training camps have their proprietary methods for extracting peak performance but the fight game at this point is open source. The chances of a competitor pulling out something surprising depend on chance and circumstance more than some secret punch their master saves for indoor students.

It smells more like a way to encourage students to kiss your ass and curry favor in hopes you deem them worthy to share the precious secrets. I think more often than not, both sides are honestly more interested in the kink of that power dynamic than actually learning a martial art.

I'd gladly eat my hat if proven wrong, but secret masters with secret techniques that are actually useful simply don't exist anymore. Just charlatans with no track record.

The secret is practice and experience, change my mind.

Anyone who knows me knows that I accepted all challenges at any time
These days I think why bother
As my teacher would say
Why struggle to give someone a gift
I am sure there are good teachers out there who just don’t care about passing on an art to everyone that asks
Passing on the art is about how you train every aspect from day one
That is why it is so hard to teach those who have less than quality training early on
No matter how much they desire the real stuff
The false paths are internally trained
In both body and mind
The old cup is full story
I laugh every day when I realise what gems some of my most simple exercises are
Ones I have been doing daily for close to 50 years

I agree that whatever one learns from experience matters most. I think there's sometimes a difference between what some teachers demonstrate for the public and what they teach their closest students. That is a product of people attending seminars and then teaching their students. It seems petty. But it exists. I don't think it's about secrets as much as preserving the rice bowl.

I'm just not sure why a lot of us get caught up in the idea of "one optimal form" when there can be numerous effective variations - for example there are at least 12 variations on xiao baji jia in the bajiquan systems I know of - over the course of a lifetime I doubt whether a "Master's" form stays static

Bob wrote:over the course of a lifetime I doubt whether a "Master's" form stays static

I would argue that it should not. It should change with both training & fighting experience.

Anyone think some teachers teach their indoor students something and the public something else? just curious.

IMO there is far too much emphasis on the "magic transformation of secret forms" - where I have seen the differences it usually involves the basi jiben gong which often leads to a more time efficient effective transformation - one also has to consider what the "public students'" goals and objectives are - e.g. Do they really want fajin training which can be initially be trained as relaxed stance training and single moving drills?

IMO forms are like an empty vessel which can hold a variety of substances - it's the substances that are the key but I'm not here to convince anyone that what I have observed is somehow the ultimate truth - just observations over time

Rhen wrote:Anyone think some teachers teach their indoor students something and the public something else? just curious.

IMHO, I believe that many have a wrong idea about what "indoor" vs "public" or "common" student really is. I would say that some teachers can show and teach longtime students different things.

In China, many teachers teach in public spaces for a larger group, but eventually people who keep showing up, can come and be taught in private or in small groups, often inside the teachers own home. Thus it's called "indoor", or inside the door. I don't think that you need to make more fuzz about the word than that.

The internal arts are so rich and have so much to offer. It's just impossible teach every beginner och student who show up now and then deeper or more complex things. This is the problem with many teachers, even some more well known, that they have a long list of teachers they have attended seminars for or took some private classes from. But still, they don't have that longterm relationship with maybe any teacher at all. So all or most of their knowledge is pretty shallow and "basic". But if you do have that longterm relationship, your teacher don't need to be famous or have a big name, as long as he also have had the same kind of relationship with his teacher(/s).

There is stuff that I've learned and that I teach that will be misunderstood w/o a significant time investment on the parts of both the teacher and the student. So, that material is reserved for "indoor" students -- the ones that stick around and put the effort in. That's how I was taught it.
This comes up sometimes in "public" classes and I do my best to work on it in ways that give everyone benefit and won't mislead casual students.

Then there are teachers and students who are fascinated with the "secrets". Obviously a money maker for teachers. And this appears to mislead students just as much as carelessly teaching something that requires care and depth. The idea that a hook in a move rather than a straight punch is the result of "defanging" the public form and that a student would be getting the real material by being shown the straight punch is ludicrous. And honestly reflects pretty poorly on both the teacher and the students.

It is important to be careful of what's taught. Because teaching carelessly and studying carelessly is to teach and learn incorrectly.